JAPAN: Japan began what one senior politician called a "new era" yesterday with the election of its youngest and possibly most hawkish prime minister since the second World War.
The 52-year-old Shinzo Abe replaces Junichiro Koizumi, who steps down after 5½ tumultuous years in office. "The sprout of reform is growing into a big tree," said Mr Koizumi in his farewell statement.
Mr Abe has pledged to beef up defence, boost patriotism in the nation's schools and revise Japan's war-renouncing constitution. His election by 339 out of 475 votes in the lower house and over half the votes cast in the upper house was a foregone conclusion, following his selection as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party last week.
The new prime minister quickly announced a conservative-heavy cabinet. Harvard-educated economist Yasuhisa Shiozaki was appointed chief cabinet secretary and handed a newly created post to investigate abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea.
Outspoken foreign minister Taro Aso keeps his job, and Fumio Kyuma, a veteran lawmaker who supports strong defence ties with the US, has been appointed head of the defence agency. In a 2002 interview, Mr Kyuma said: "Japan cannot settle the problem with North Korea without the United States. Also in terms of economic relations, Japan is inseparable from the United States. Without the United States, Japan is helpless."
Mr Abe takes over the reins of an economy in much better shape than when his predecessor became prime minister in 2001, but he also inherits huge problems, including soured diplomatic ties with South Korea and Japan's largest trading partner China.
Both countries regard the Koizumi era as a disaster, marred by disputes about territory, history and the prime minister's repeated visits to the controversial war memorial Yasukuni Shrine.
Both countries cautiously welcomed Mr Abe. "We hope Japan's new leader can endeavour to improve and develop Sino-Japanese relations," said China's foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang. Seoul said it hoped Mr Abe would "refrain from behaviour" that damages ties.
Mr Abe has kept mum on whether he too will make a pilgrimage to Yasukuni, although he supports prime ministerial visits and went in secret in April.
When questioned directly on his beliefs about the war era, he ducks and weaves, saying historical issues "should be left to historians".
As a rising political star, Mr Abe chaired a group of right-wing LDP policy makers who backed a campaign to revise high-school textbooks and delete references to second World War war crimes by the Japanese military.
Last year he was at the centre of a censorship scandal when he admitted leaning on Japan's state broadcaster, NHK, to change a 2001 documentary on wartime "comfort women": sex slaves abducted by the military from Korean and other countries.
These revelations surprised some, but Mr Abe's political colours have long been nailed to the mast, as have his twin policy obsessions: rewriting the 1947 constitution and reforming the education system. And although he is being hailed in some quarters as a political breath of fresh air, both policies have been on the LDP wish-list since 1955.
Written while Japan was under US occupation, the constitution and its war-renouncing Article 9, which allows Japan to maintain "Self-Defence Forces" but not an army, has always sat uneasily with conservatives.
Parts of the document, such as Japan's expressed determination to "trust in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world", have caused particular ire; Mr Abe calls them a degrading "signed deed of apology". Mr Abe's earliest political mentor was his grandfather, Nobosuke Kishi, a legendary backroom player who was indicted as a war criminal but later released and went on to become a key US cold war ally and prime minister from 1957-1960. Under US pressure to shoulder more of the burden of the cold war, Kishi also tried but failed to revise the constitution amid opposition from socialists and pacifists.
Many believe Japan's future prime minister wants to fulfil his grandfather's thwarted mission, and in a country where the left has shrunk to a mostly ineffectual rump, he may well succeed.
He is backed by US hawks who want Japan to square up to China. Last month he received the seal of approval from US conservative doyen George Will, who wrote: "Before this decade ends the Self-Defence Forces may be taken off Article 9's leash."
Still, as Mr Abe has admitted, rewriting a document that is woven into the fabric of post-war Japan's political and cultural architecture will not be easy. Legally, any revision needs the approval of two-thirds of both houses of parliament, and opinion polls still show strong support for the pacifist clause. But that support has weakened as tensions have grown with North Korea, tensions Mr Abe's opponents accuse him of stoking.
Earlier this year, he angered Pyongyang and Seoul when he suggested that Tokyo had the right to pre-emptively strike North Korea after it launched a series of missiles.
There are signs, however, that Mr Abe is pulling in his horns as he gets closer to the prime minister's door. Although he wants to accelerate the US-backed missile defence system, he has ruled out the development of nuclear weapons, at least for now, and hinted that a long-delayed summit with China may be on the cards.